Photo by Ryan Maxwell Photography
Once upon a time, there was a little girl in a red hood. We all know this story. The simple image of the girl in red is all we need. We know there is a wood, a wolf, a disguise, a devouring. Little Red Riding Hood, or, as it is known in the Arne-Thompson folktale classification system, 333, has variations from all over the world: France, Italy, Germany, Asia and beyond. Sometimes Red Riding Hood is eaten. Sometimes, with the help of a woodsman, she escapes. And sometimes she rescues herself.
This story has been interpreted and appropriated to mean many things: budding female sexuality, the evils of straying from the path, the seduction of darkness, and the victimization of women as well as female empowerment. (For more on this, see the excellent book, Red Riding Hood Uncloaked).
This is where we begin our piece called “The Woods.” The girl in the red hood. The woods. The basket of goodies. The predators.
Yet this piece is not just an homage to Little Red. Like some of my favorite adaptations of the classic tale, we turns the story’s expectations on its head and we add another one of my fandoms to the mix: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Sit back, dear readers, and let me tell you about Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyres. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was initially a rather campy and terrible movie. For some reason they decided to make it a TV show, and gave the writer, Joss Whedon, control. The show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is incredibly clever, funny, and heart-wrenching and everyone should watch it. But I digress.
The idea of the show is that there is one girl in all the world who has the strength and skill to hunt and kill vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness. When she dies, a new girl is “called” to be the slayer and is imbued with the slayer’s strength and agility.
The tragedy of Buffy is that there is only one slayer. She will win battles, but she will never win the war. The forces of darkness keep making new evil and she is the only one who can stand in its way. It is a heavy burden for anyone, let alone teenager, to bear. Yet, she keeps on fighting.
Strangely enough, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV show, has played with the Little Red Riding Hood story several times. One of my favorites takes place on Halloween during the episode “Fear Itself,” when the Slayer’s friends meet for a costume party:
In another episode, “Helpless,” Buffy is injected with a serum that makes her loose her slayer powers. She has a moment when she is walking home in a red sweatshirt and two human men begin to harass her. She turns to shut them up, but then turns away, feeling that she, without her slayer strength, would be putting herself in danger.
As part of a test, a psychotic vampire is let loose for her to kill all by herself, and he steals Buffy’s red sweatshirt. He crouches sobbing on the porch and lures Buffy’s concerned mom into his clutches, like the wolf dressed as the grandmother. He then kidnaps Buffy’s mom and takes her to an abandoned house, where he taunts the weakened slayer with “Why did you come to the dark of the woods? To bring all these sweets to grandmother’s house?” and “If you stray from the path, you will lose your way.” Of course, she ends up kicking his ass.
Little Red is such a profoundly affecting story. The images are so immediately visceral. Red for blood or sex, predator, innocence, stranger danger, the prickle on the back of your neck when you are out alone at night and you know someone is watching. And yet, it has been used everywhere to mean vastly different things, from Tex Avery’s “Red Hot Riding Hood” where a sexy Little Red seduces the wolf to the movie Freeway, where a serial killer, Bob Wolverton, hunts a poor teenage girl and mayhem ensues.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, HELPLESS
SEASON 3 EPISODE 12
In our version, our slayer is a “Level One” slayer, as Jason put it: new to her powers and excited to be out on the hunt. She goes out into the woods looking for trouble, wearing the trappings of a victim. As Buffy once says herself as she lures a vamp away from a populated area by pretending to be a helpless girl, “You demons can’t resist a run and stumble can you?” They expect a meal and get a slayer instead. The hunter becomes the hunted. But our level one slayer is still learning and may have bit off more than she can chew.
– Megan Reichelt
